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Abstract Quotes

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Abstract Quotes

“All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend one’s home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession – to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership – is a joke.”

HumansDifferentFactsHomeSeemsCultureNextFieldsEternalUniqueJokesAspectClaimsPopulationPossessionGravesLandscapeClassicAbstractImmigrantsShoreOwnershipHostilityInvasionCompoundsGrudgeSettlementDifferent CulturesHuman Population
Author:Neal Ascherson
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“I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. We can know only that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree.”

KnowsWorldBelieveHumansMatterCoursesI BelieveHuman BeingsTreeObjectivesCupsAbstractUnreal
Book:Giorgio Morandi
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“Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.”

LifeMeanLittlesLanguageOrdinaryLogicMathematicsEverydayMathPhysicsMathematicalAbstractEveryday LifePhysicistMathematical Logic
Book:The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959
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“Like a stool which needs three legs to be stable, mathematics education needs three components: good problems, with many of them being multi-step ones, a lot of technical skill, and then a broader view which contains the abstract nature of mathematics and proofs. One does not get all of these at once, but a good mathematics program has them as goals and makes incremental steps toward them at all levels.”

NeedsDoeProblemThreeGoalLevelsViewsEducationStepsSkillsProgramMathematicsLegsMathProofAbstractStableComponentsStoolsTechnical SkillsThree Legs
Author:Richard Askey
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“And so on, until you arrive at the other side, among the purely abstract self-harming: the grinding over your failures, the refusal to remember anything good, the determination to ensure - if anyone falls into the mistake of making it clear they actually like you - that the next time round they change their opinion pronto. Emotional self-cannibalism, in other words, like those tessellated pictures of a person grappling with a mirror image of himself.”

IfsPersonsSelfRememberFallNextSidesMistakeOpinionClearEmotionalLike YouDeterminationMirrorsRoundsAbstractOver YouNext TimeRefusalCannibalismGrapplingMirror Image
Book:Stuart: A Life Backwards
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“Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.”

MeanArtMatterFeelingsLawUnderstandingMagicMysterySubjectsArt IsAddObviousExcitementAbstractVisualsDullDescriptionControlledTake TimeRealismSuggestionsAbstractionArbitraryImplicationsSubject MatterMethodologyZestAbstract ArtTime And Patience
Author:Robert Genn
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“What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons - reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.”

MenHumansWellsMayIdeasReasonEnoughDiesNamesHuman BeingsMistakeStruggleMaterialsSurvivalMen And WomenHarderMurderConnectedInstanceIdeologyAbstractLive ByVermin
Book:Ideology: An Introduction
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“Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.”

NeedsArtFeltExistenceConsequenceDirectInnovationProfoundWarmIntenseAbstractSubtleVividRelentlessUnifiedDrasticAbstract Art
Book:The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell
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“Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades...It springs newborn out of a boredom with the finality and over-saturation of Abstract-Expressionism, which, by its own esthetic logic, is the END of art, the glorious pinnacle of the long pyramidal creative process. Stifled by this rarefied atmosphere, some young painters turn back to some less exalted things like Coca-Cola, ice-cream sodas, big hamburgers, super-markets and 'EAT' signs. They are eye-hungry; they pop.”

LongArtTwoEndsBigsEyeLastsYoungTurnsProcessCreativeSpringLogicPopsDecadesHungryPainterIceAtmosphereAbstractBoredomGloriousCreative ProcessCreamIce CreamExaltedNewbornHamburgersSodaFinalityPinnacleCoca ColaExpressionismSaturationAbstract ExpressionismCream Soda
Author:Robert Indiana
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“To tell the truth, in Pacific 231 I was on the trail of a very abstract and quite ideal concept, by giving the impression of a mathematical acceleration of rhythm, while the movement itself slowed . I first called this piece Mouvement symphonique. On reflection I found that a bit colorless. Suddenly, a rather romantic image crossed my mind, and when the work was finished, I wrote the title Pacific 231, which indicates a locomotive for heavy loads and high speeds (a type unfortunately disappeared, alas, and sacrificed to electric traction).”

GivingMindFirstsFoundBitsPiecesMovementTypeReflectionConceptsIdealsHeavyFinishedSpeedImpressionRhythmMathematicalTitlesAbstractTelling The TruthElectricLoadAlasTrailsPacificHigh SpeedAccelerationColorlessTractionLocomotivesHeavy Loads
Author:Arthur Honegger
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“There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.”

PeopleFightingEvilGrowsHoursDarkCuttingGoes OnThousandHundredRootsMurderAbstractGood TimesHaving A Good TimeHerdsChewingHydra
Book:Night Watch
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“At a time when threats to the physical environment have never been greater, it may be tempting to believe that people need to be mounting the barricades rather than asking abstract questions about the human place in nature. Yet without confronting such questions, it will be hard to know which barricades to mount, and harder still to persuade large numbers of people to mount them with us. To protect the nature that is all around us, we must think long and hard about the nature we carry inside our heads.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsNeedsBelieveHumansMayLongStillsHardNumbersEnvironmentGreaterProtectHarderAskingThreatAbstractLarge NumbersConfrontingTemptingBarricades
Author:William Cronon
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“The emotional, physical and aesthetic value of a sound is linked not only to the causal explanation we attribute to it but also to its own qualities of timbre and texture, to its own personal vibration. So just as directors and cinematographers (even those who will never make abstract films) have everything to gain by refining their knowledge of visual materials and textures, we can similarly benefit from disciplined attention to the inherent qualities of sounds.”

FilmValuesSoundAttentionQualityEmotionalMaterialsDirectorsBenefitsGainsExplanationAbstractVisualsAttributesAestheticInherentLinkedVibrationsTextureRefiningCinematographersTimbre
Author:Michel Chion
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“The greatest cost of the specialization of technological life - and out of which all other damages are birthed - is arguably our separation from the practical and enriching sense of ourselves as embodied beings. When we are alienated from the wisdom of the body, our lives become theoretical and abstract, and we are distanced from the direct, felt sense of living.”

LifeBodyFeltOur LivesCostDirectSeparationPracticalsLive LifeAbstractDamageTechnologicalTheoreticalEnrichingSpecialization
Author:Richard Strozzi-Heckler
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“. . . Luddites were those frenzied traditionalists of the early 19th century who toured [England] wrecking new weaving machines on the theory that if they were destroyed . . . old jobs and old ways of life could be preserved . . . At certain times in his life each man is tempted to become a Luddite, for there is always something he would like to go back to. But to be against all change-against change in the abstract-is folly.”

IfsMenWayLifeJobsCertainCenturyTheoryMachinesEnglandDestroyedAbstractFollyTempted19th CenturyWeavingOld WaysOld Job
Author:James A. Michener
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“When you fight, you don't fight for abstract values like the flag, or the nation, or democracy. You fight for your buddy. You fight to keep him alive, and he fights to keep you alive, and you go on that way, day after day, battle after battle. And when one of your buddies dies, something inside you dies as well. But you go on. You fight, so that his death isn't meaningless, his sacrifice isn't for nothing.”

WayWellsDeathValuesDiesFightingNationsDemocracyAliveSacrificeGoes OnBattleAbstractMeaninglessFlagsBuddy
Book:Red Cell
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“Sometimes it happens that the computer's assessment is very abstract. It's correct, but it's not useful for a practical game. You have to prove the assessment with very strong moves and if you don't find all of these strong moves you may lose very quickly. For a computer this is not a problem, but for humans it is not so easy.”

IfsHumansMaySometimesProblemHappensMovingGamesStrongEasyLosesProveComputerChessPracticalsAnalysisAbstractVery StrongAssessment
Author:Vassily Ivanchuk
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“This New Age is marking the dawn of a new world-thought. That new thought is a new cosmic concept of the value of man to man. The whole world is discovering that all mankind is one and that the unity of man is real – not just an abstract idea. Mankind is beginning to discover that the hurt of any man hurts every man, and, conversely, the uplift of any man uplifts every man”

MenWorldIdeasRealWholeAgeValuesHurtMankindConceptsUnityEvery ManWhole WorldUpliftingDawnAbstractCosmicNew WorldDiscoveringNew AgeNew Thought
Author:Walter Russell
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“The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of the" Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute - Abstract Space and Duration being the other two.”

TwoUniverseThreeSpaceEternalAspectAbsolutesBreathsAppearanceAbstractCyclesDurationDisappearance
Book:The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
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“At least three time per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active? Charney captured the essence of this with less-abstract wording: Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? He eliminated all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.”

InspirationalImportantUsedThreeAsksHoursResultsFocusCuttingActivityEssenceFollowingActiveMindsetFatsThings To DoAbstractProductiveMeaninglessDedicationDisguiseThree TimesRuthlessCapturedInventingDemonstratingCrutchesWordingInventing Things
Author:Tim Ferriss
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“Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.”

WorldWritingWellsPhilosophyProblemAbleWantedCreativityInvolvedAuthorityLifetimePhilosopherVariousEnormousAbstractTensionThrownOccupationIdleIdlenessAcademiaIndolence
Author:Will Self
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“A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exit in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross sections cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one, things in motion, motion in things.”

DoeEyeActionCuttingOne ThingPureCrossesMeetingsChaosAbstractComplexityIsolatedSectionsExitVerbsNounsSnapshotsTerminal
Book:The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition
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